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Shamnad Basheer

There were several triggers, but I highlight two of the most important ones. As I began teaching at NUJS in 2008, I looked around my class and noted that most of my students had accessed some of the best schools in India, spoke good English and lived privileged urban lives.

Professor Shamnad Basheer’s death last week had not just shocked the legal profession and academia, but has also brought to the surface memories of the many lives that had been touched by him in his short time on earth.

The new Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), which the national law universities (NLU) had recently decided will be held by a permanent CLAT secretariat instead of letting a new NLU learn find new ways of botching it up every year, will be held entirely offline.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) has moved one step closer to possibly an error-free conduct by establishing a seven-member permanent secretariat for conducting the exam from this year onward, as first reported by Live Law.

The Supreme Court last Friday asked some national law universities to give their suggestions on a permanent body to conduct the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) and to look into the misuse of the Non-Resident Indian (NRI) quota in NLU admissions.

Much like NLSIU Bangalore several months ago, NUJS Kolkata too has finally advertised to fill its vacant professorial positions, including the intellectual property (IPR) chair professor post that has been empty for more than three years after its former IPR chair Prof Shamnad Basheer had resigned.

Exceeding last year’s tally by one, eight Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) scholars from non-traditional backgrounds have made it to national law universities, with one scholar making it to NLU Delhi.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is of no interest to the government, submitted the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in the Supreme Court yesterday, in response to Shamnad Basheer’s challenge to the conduct of CLAT by national law universities (NLUs).

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has asked the Supreme Court, in an affidavit filed in the challenge to conduct of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) that was filed by Shamnad Basheer and others, that it be allowed to conduct the CLAT in future.

Advocate Swathi Sukumar acting for Shamnad Basheer and other legal and social academics, won for a Delhi University photocopying shop in the Delhi high court, which dismissed the copyright suit of three international publishers against it, reported various media.

The central government has been called by the Delhi high court to show how it is ensuring that patentees commercially work their patents, on the public interest litigation (PIL) of the Infosys Foundation’s intellectual property rights prize awardee Prof Shamnad Basheer, reported Spicy IP.

The Patent Act and Rules require that anyone who has been granted a patent must annually disclose as to how far and to what extent they have commercially worked their patent, so as to help demonstrate how the public is benefitting from their patents. These are India’s “patent working norms”.

According to Basheer’s PIL, “35 per cent of the patentees [failed] to disclose their patent working status during 2009 to 2012” and the government “never initiated action against any of the errant patentees”.

Basheer adds: “What makes this government inaction even more egregious is the fact that the blatant non-compliance was already brought to the notice of the government four years ago through a similar investigation conducted by the Petitioner in a public report titled ‘The ‘Non-Working’ of the Patent Office ‘Working’ Requirement!’.”

The PIL will be heard next on 17 November. Basheer’s other PIL, the Supreme Court challenge to the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), will be heard on Friday.

Shamnad Basheer, former NUJS Kolkata professor and founder of NGO Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA), has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court seeking a permanent CLAT body and transparency in the exam.

The Madras high court ruled that the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) is unconstitutional, reported SpicyIP.

The high court held that the provisions creating the tribunal are unconstitutional where they allow bureaucrats to be elected as judicial members to it even to the extent of becoming its chairman or vice chairman.

The court also ruled that any committee electing members to IPAB must also be constituted of members with judicial qualifications.

The ruling was made on a writ petition by Spicy IP founder Shamnad Basheer.

Shamnad Basheer has won the Infosys Science Foundation 2014 prize in the humanities category today.

The former NUJS Kolkata MHRD chair professor for intellectual property (IP), founder of the Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) initiative and the SpicyIP blog, was awarded the prize “for his contributions to the analysis of a range of legal issues, including pharmaceutical patent injunctions and enforcement”, according to Infosys’ press release.

The prize, conferred on individuals in six categories, consists of a purse of Rs 55 Lakhs, a 22 karat gold medal and a citation certificate for each category. Nobel prize laureate Amartya Sen was on the six-person jury for the prize in the humanities category. In previous years the prizes have been won mostly by academics and professors.